A forest products company contacted S. Howes to design a system which would take residual waste wood product from a sawmill and convert it into a value-added product to be sold as animal bedding. S. Howes engineered a system that conveyed the product from the sawmill to a knife cutter where the size of the product was reduced. The woodchips were then passed into a Snappy Shaker where they were separated and resulted in a more uniformly-sized product. A S. Howes’ conveyor moved the woodchips to a baler where the product was packaged for sale. The major challenges in designing the system included the different properties, sizes, and moisture levels of the incoming residual wood as well as the material’s flowability. Tests were performed at S. Howes’ testing facility to determine the specifications of the system.

The system currently processes up to 4,000 pounds of woodchips per hour and creates value out of what otherwise would have been considered waste